Quotes by Freud, Sigmund




Sigmund Freud (May 6, 1856 - September 23, 1939) was an Austrian neuroscientist who left the laboratory to go into private practice as a neurologist. He founded the clinical and theoretical school of psychoanalysis which holds that human development progresses through a sequence of psychosexual stages which may be interfered with by internalized psychosocial conflicts. To cope with intrapsychic conflict the unconscious mind initiates a defensive process called repression in order to prevent unacceptable sexual and aggressive wishes from becoming conscious, however they remain active in the unconscious and continue to strive for expression. Most commonly, benign evidence of repressed contents can be seen in dreams, jokes, and various Freudian slips. When the mind has to cope with a serious failure of defensive repression, we see the development of symptom constellations called neurosis, which can be treated by bringing the repressed wishes fully and safely into consciousness and releasing the associated pent up emotional accumulation. Freud sought to accomplish this in the privacy and safety of the treatment situation. .

"Anatomy is destiny."

Freud, Sigmund on destiny    Share


"The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him."

Freud, Sigmund on doctors
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"Woe to you, my Princess, when I come... you shall see who is the stronger, a gentle little girl who doesn't eat enough or a big wild man who has cocaine in his body."

Freud, Sigmund on drugs
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"I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection."

Freud, Sigmund on fathers
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"Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither emotions nor conflicts."

Freud, Sigmund on flowers    Share

"We know less about the sexual life of little girls than of boys. But we need not feel ashamed of this distinction; after all, the sexual life of adult women is a dark continent for psychology."

Freud, Sigmund on girls
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"America is a mistake, a giant mistake."

Freud, Sigmund on america
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"America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success."

Freud, Sigmund on america
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"One feels inclined to say that the intention that man should be happy is not included in the plan of Creation."

Freud, Sigmund on happiness
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"Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise."

Freud, Sigmund on honesty
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"Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs, he is truly magnificent; but those organs have not grown on him and they still give him much trouble at times."

Freud, Sigmund on humankind    Share

"I have found little that is good about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all. That is something that you cannot say aloud, or perhaps even think."

Freud, Sigmund on humankind
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"The impression forces itself upon one that men measure by false standards, that everyone seeks power, success, riches for himself, and admires others who attain them, while undervaluing the truly precious thing in life."

Freud, Sigmund on illusion    Share

"A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes, but to get into accord with them; they are legitimately what directs his conduct in the world."

Freud, Sigmund on insanity
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"The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization."

Freud, Sigmund on liberty    Share

"The tendency of aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual disposition in man... it constitutes the most powerful obstacle to culture."

Freud, Sigmund on anger
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"We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love, never so forlornly unhappy as when we have lost our love object or its love."

Freud, Sigmund on love
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"One is very crazy when in love."

Freud, Sigmund on love
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"Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness."

Freud, Sigmund on love
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"Human life in common is only made possible when a majority comes together which is stronger than any separate individual and which remains united against all separate individuals. The power of this community is then set up as right in opposition to the power of the individual, which is condemned as brute force."

Freud, Sigmund on majority    Share

"Where id was, there shall ego be."

Freud, Sigmund on maturity
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"The conscious mind may be compared to a fountain playing in the sun and falling back into the great subterranean pool of subconscious from which it rises."

Freud, Sigmund on mind
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"The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water."

Freud, Sigmund on mind
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"The most complicated achievements of thought are possible without the assistance of consciousness."

Freud, Sigmund on mind
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"I do not think our successes can compete with those of Lourdes. There are so many more people who believe in the miracles of the Blessed Virgin than in the existence of the unconscious."

Freud, Sigmund on miracles    Share

"Men are more moral than they think and far more immoral than they can imagine."

Freud, Sigmund on morality
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"A certain degree of neurosis is of inestimable value as a drive, especially to a psychologist."

Freud, Sigmund on neurosis
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"Neurotics complain of their illness, but they make the most of it, and when it comes to talking it away from them they will defend it like a lioness her young."

Freud, Sigmund on neurosis
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"We have long observed that every neurosis has the result, and therefore probably the purpose, of forcing the patient out of real life, of alienating him from actuality."

Freud, Sigmund on neurosis
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"Every normal person, in fact, is only normal on the average. His ego approximates to that of the psychotic in some part or other and to a greater or lesser extent."

Freud, Sigmund on normality
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"Opposition is not necessarily enmity; it is merely misused and made an occasion for enmity."

Freud, Sigmund on opposition    Share

"The time comes when each one of us has to give up as illusions the expectations which, in his youth, he pinned upon his fellow-men, and when he may learn how much difficulty and pain has been added to his life by their ill-will."

Freud, Sigmund on people
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"The goal towards which the pleasure principle impels us -- of becoming happy -- is not attainable: yet we may not -- nay, cannot -- give up the efforts to come nearer to realization of it by some means or other."

Freud, Sigmund on pleasure    Share

"No one who has seen a baby sinking back satiated from the breast and falling asleep with flushed cheeks and a blissful smile can escape the reflection that this picture persists as a prototype of the expression of sexual satisfaction in later life."

Freud, Sigmund on babies
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"By abolishing private property one takes away the human love of aggression."

Freud, Sigmund on property    Share

"It might be said of psychoanalysis that if you give it your little finger it will soon have your whole hand."

Freud, Sigmund on psychiatry    Share

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